A CNN reporter tweeted me this morning, concerned that I was mischaracterizing Trump, and that my story is part of the “outrage machine.” In fact, CNN’s PR dept. responded to Trump’s post by quoting Sarah Huckabee’s lie about Trump never promoting violence. Their clear point: Trump just promoted and encouraged violence against CNN reporters. And that’s exactly what I wrote. I just don’t see a qualitative difference between “calls for” and “encourages or promotes.”

“The President in no way form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence. If anything, quite the contrary.” – @SHSanders45 6/29/17

ABC’s Martha Raddatz said this morning that the tweet “seems like a threat.” Raddatz continued, “you don’t think that’s a threat to anyone, you don’t think that’s sending a message ‘do that to the media, do that to CNN’?”

Trump is making this appeal for his supporters to assault reporters only weeks after a nut tried to assassinate members of Congress playing softball. It’s also interesting to note that Trump’s family and staff expressed outrage over Kathy Griffin’s inappropriate joke about beheading Trump. (We didn’t hear many reporters claiming the outrage against Griffin was overblown. And for the record, I was just as tough on Kathy Griffin.) And then Trump himself calls for reporters to be beaten.

This is the man leading the effort to repeal Obamacare. This is the man who has chosen to decimate pre-existing condition protections and Medicaid. If you want to know whether you should trust the health care bill the Republicans are working on, you need not look any farther than the man who is in charge of the entire Obamacare repeal effort.

If you don’t think Donald Trump is capable of legislative violence against millions of Americans, you haven’t been watching.

With the election of Donald Trump, AMERICAblog’s independent journalism and activism is more needed than ever.

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John AravosisFollow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in Washington, DC. John's article archive.